Causes of Disease

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jun 1, 1876

Causes of Disease.

In very many private houses of the well-to-do and wealthy, streams of devitalized air are nursed with the utmost care. There is the lumber room of the house, in which all kinds of incongruous things are huddled away from light and fresh air. There are dark under-stair closets in which cast-off clothing, charged with organic debris of the body, are left rest for days and even weeks together. There are bed-rooms overstocked with furniture, the floors covered with heavy carpets, in which are collected pounds upon pounds of organic dust. There are dressing-rooms in which are stowed away old shoes, and well-packed drawers of well-worn clothing. There are dining-rooms in which the odor of the latest meal never is absent, and from the sideboard and cupboards of which the smell of decomposing fruit or cheese is always emanating. There are drawing-rooms in which the scent of decayed roses, or of the varnish from the furniture, or of the dye from the table-covers is always present. There are kitchens in which there is the odorous indication of perpetual cooking. There are sculleries in which the process of “washing up” seems to be in permanent action, and where the products from change of stored bones, potato parings, recent vegetable green food, and other similar refuse are abiding. There are water-closets in which there is at every time of day and night a persistent faint ammoniacal odor.

Under such conditions thousands of families live, children grow up, and old people die. They may all go for years and suffer no acute disease, and those whose duty calls them daily into the open air may even be healthy; but those who have to remain nearly all day in the devitalized atmosphere of the house show the fact in paleness of face, languor of limb, persistent sense of weariness, and dullness of spirit.—B. W. RICHARDSON, M. D., in Diseases of Modern Life.